LevelEleven Ups Its Game With $2M From Athletes and Other Investors

VentureWire ,

Timothy Hay,

September 10, 2013,

(c) 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

LevelEleven Inc., a company offering salespeople incentives to work harder by tapping into their competitive spirit, has raised $2 million from a group of investors that includes the most competitive among us: professional athletes.

The Detroit-based startup says the seed round follows a $1.5 million financing that the company raised in April. Valuation was not disclosed.

The new funding was provided by Detroit Venture Partners, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Salesforce.com and angel investors, the company said. Also participating in the funding was Mashburn Justice Capital Partners, a firm fronted by retired Dallas Mavericks forward Jamal Mashburn and NFL offensive tackle Winston Justice, formerly of the Philadelphia Eagles and now a free agent.

The investment in LevelEleven is the first for Mashburn Justice, which officially launched this week, said Bob Marsh, chief executive of LevelEleven. Attempts to reach Florida-based Mashburn Justice were not immediately successful.

Since Mr. Mashburn's retirement from the NBA in 2006, he has gotten involved in a number of business ventures-including restaurants and car dealerships--and has also mentored other athletes on entrepreneurship, Mr. Marsh said.

LevelEleven is one of a number of startups seeking to "gamify" a segment of the business world by offering competitive features and services that have proven massively popular on social networks.

But where the company's rivals, such as BunchBall Inc. and BadgeVille Inc., port their game mechanics to a variety of different industries and professions, LevelEleven focuses exclusively on salespeople, Mr. Marsh said.

"It's almost comical, how competitive they can be," he said.

LevelEleven made an early decision to partner with Salesforce.com, an outlier in customer-relations software with more than 100,000 customers, Mr. Marsh said. Salesforce now offers LevelEleven software among its other products.

The software enables leaderboards and other tools to get salespeople competing with one another, and can display results on computer screens, digital displays and mobile devices, the CEO said.

Though the company has kept a low profile, it has amassed a list of customers that includes cable-TV provider Comcast Corp., restaurant reservation service OpenTable, business analyst Morningstar and the Detroit Pistons basketball team, the CEO said.